PRS/RT(2010)2/1

PROJECT REPORT SUMMARY

Project nr: / RT(2010)2
Subject: / At the request of FAO a workshop was organized by Orange House Partnership (OHP) for a group of approximately 30-35 experts from Russian speaking eastern European countries.
Offered to (ZT):
Sponsored by (RT):
Contracted by (FT): / The workshop was sponsored by FAO. OHP did not charge for its extensive preparatory work nor for the days spent in travelling to the meeting venue (Ukraine) and the actual meeting days. However, the travel and related expenses of the OHP experts (2) were all reimbursed and a modest daily allowance was offered, which was donated to OHP by one of the experts.
Start and end-dates and venue: / 16-17 March 2010, Kiev, Ukraine.
Experts involved: / ·  29 individuals from Armenia (3), Azerbaijan (3) Belarus (1), Georgia (3), Moldova (3), Russia (7) and Ukraine (9);
·  Mary Kenny, Nutrition Officer, FAO Headquarters, Rome;
·  Eleonora Dupouy, Food Safety Officer, FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia, Budapest;
·  Wim de Wit, OHP, The Netherlands;
·  Herman Koëter, OHP, Belgium
Background and Objectives: / The objective was to assist the governmental authorities of the 7 Russian speaking countries with the development of food and feed management tools and instruments and ultimately with a proper infrastructure to manage food and feed safety. In accordance with the criteria applied by the World Bank these 7 countries are either developing countries (5) or emerging economies (2).
Meetings and Missions: / The Workshop: “Raising Understanding and Consistent Application of Risk Analysis Framework at Country Level” was held at the National University of Life and Environmental Sciences of Ukraine in Kiev from 16-18 March 2010. OHP had prepared 16 lectures and case studies and 5 break-out sessions to discuss specific issues in more detail.
Main Topics and observations: / The attendants were, without exception, very pro-active and eager to learn from the meeting. Developments at country level are very diverse and none of the countries has a national food safety management body: in fact most have very complicated structures with substantial levels of overlapping responsibilities and activities. A few countries have basically no structure at all in this respect.
The most striking observation was that food safety standards, including MRLs, were generally considered as the most important management instrument. Russia was proud to announce that it has thousands of food standards, several with maximum allowable levels in food products which are well below internationally agreed standards. Monitoring and surveillance, however, are generally quite understaffed activities and are certainly not up to any proper compliance monitoring.
At the end of the meeting the delegates from Azerbaijan requested OHP to give similar training in Azerbaijan to a larger group of national experts and responsible managers.
The training was considered very successful based on completed questionnaires. Also the FAO staff present expressed their appreciation for the enormous amount of work done by OHP.
In summary, the project can be considered as successful: 7 developing countries and emerging economies received training from OHP under the FAO umbrella at no substantial costs for OHP (apart from time spent).
Documentation (upon request): / ·  Report: R/RT(2010)2/1;
·  16 PowerPoint presentations (as PDF file)
Date: / 7 April 2010
Signature: / Herman B.W.M.Koëter

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